It's a bit depressing to reach the age in which TV shows one actually remembers start getting rehashed into movies. Not nearly as depressing as the movies they become, though, if "The Dukes of Hazzard" is any indication. There's little point in comparing show to movie, which is always the temptation with film remakes, for there's no excuse for a movie to be this aggressively stupid; to actually go out of its way to find the lowest common denominator. The term has always implied a mathematical absolute, but the brazen vacuousness of "The Dukes of Hazzard" puts even that in doubt.
I suppose it's pointless to get worked up over it. After all, TV remakes are traditionally moviedom's remedial class. "Dukes," though, seems to be taunting us with its unlikeability. Take Bo and Luke Duke, played by lowbrow specialists Sean William Scott and Johnny Knoxville. Occasional exclamations of "woo hoo!" and a background of bluegrass don't disguise the fact that Them Duke Boys really are violent antisocial misfits. Hazzard county, a conservative's show room in which a little moonshinin' dudd'n kill no one, a bar fight is exercise, and blowing up police cars with molotov cocktails and explosive arrows is just Boys Being Boys, is a museum of the worst the United States has to offer. The repugnance of "The Dukes of Hazzard" is in its wanting us to laugh with and not at the good ol' boys behind these antics. But how can we sympathize with characters who not only still drive a car with a confederate flag painted on it, but who don't even understand its significance when challenged on it? And then there are the women. The little I've seen of Jessica Simpson creeps me out. She seems plastic, not in the surgical sense, but in the actually made of it sense, like those unsettling Duracell ads featuring the ghoulish, battery-operated suburban family. She's the reverse side of the Uncanny Valley effect, in which robots become increasingly discomfiting the more they approximate actual people. Regardless, her sole purpose here is to wiggle her assets for the men of Hazzard to get what she wants, always accompanied by a mock-exasperated eye roll that lets us know that a little grab ass actually makes her day. We're also treated to a tour of "the university" in Atlanta, in which every female has just stepped out of the shower, or is interrupted mid-pillow fight. The women in this movie exist expressly to giggle and bat their eyes in appreciation of living in a place where Men are still Men.
The plot. Who cares? Certainly not the film itself, which is most interested in T, A, and Yee Haw. "The Dukes of Hazzard" is dedicated above all else to celebrating ignorance, caddishness, and the heroism of simpletons, rather than satirizing such. Is all this some meta-joke that I'm missing? Is the gag that there are still people and places like this in 2005 America? If that's the case, there are many words to characterize it. "Funny" isn't among them.
I suppose it's pointless to get worked up over it. After all, TV remakes are traditionally moviedom's remedial class. "Dukes," though, seems to be taunting us with its unlikeability. Take Bo and Luke Duke, played by lowbrow specialists Sean William Scott and Johnny Knoxville. Occasional exclamations of "woo hoo!" and a background of bluegrass don't disguise the fact that Them Duke Boys really are violent antisocial misfits. Hazzard county, a conservative's show room in which a little moonshinin' dudd'n kill no one, a bar fight is exercise, and blowing up police cars with molotov cocktails and explosive arrows is just Boys Being Boys, is a museum of the worst the United States has to offer. The repugnance of "The Dukes of Hazzard" is in its wanting us to laugh with and not at the good ol' boys behind these antics. But how can we sympathize with characters who not only still drive a car with a confederate flag painted on it, but who don't even understand its significance when challenged on it? And then there are the women. The little I've seen of Jessica Simpson creeps me out. She seems plastic, not in the surgical sense, but in the actually made of it sense, like those unsettling Duracell ads featuring the ghoulish, battery-operated suburban family. She's the reverse side of the Uncanny Valley effect, in which robots become increasingly discomfiting the more they approximate actual people. Regardless, her sole purpose here is to wiggle her assets for the men of Hazzard to get what she wants, always accompanied by a mock-exasperated eye roll that lets us know that a little grab ass actually makes her day. We're also treated to a tour of "the university" in Atlanta, in which every female has just stepped out of the shower, or is interrupted mid-pillow fight. The women in this movie exist expressly to giggle and bat their eyes in appreciation of living in a place where Men are still Men.
The plot. Who cares? Certainly not the film itself, which is most interested in T, A, and Yee Haw. "The Dukes of Hazzard" is dedicated above all else to celebrating ignorance, caddishness, and the heroism of simpletons, rather than satirizing such. Is all this some meta-joke that I'm missing? Is the gag that there are still people and places like this in 2005 America? If that's the case, there are many words to characterize it. "Funny" isn't among them.